Last week, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman announced that, inspired by his son’s coming out, he now supports marriage equality. Religious Right activists are, of course, responding with a characteristic lack of tact and grace.

“... Perhaps [the senator’s] love for his son has deceived him in not being able to differentiate between loving his son and helping his son to do the right thing, versus changing his entire worldview and his view of the natural institution of legitimate marriage in order to accommodate his son's abhorrent lifestyle,” says Barber.

Portman told reporters his previous views on marriage were rooted in his Methodist faith and his change of heart came because of "the Bible's overarching themes of love and compassion." Barber challenges that interpretation.

“This provides us a perfect example of the danger of looking at things through the jaundiced prism of our own feelings rather than on objective truths,” says the Liberty Counsel attorney.

I’ve heard some wacky excuses by politicians for changing their minds on some of the most important moral issues facing American, but Ohio Sen. Rob Portman’s rationale for flip-flopping on same-sex marriage takes the proverbial wedding cake.

In case you haven’t heard, his son is a homosexual.

“I have come to believe that if two people are prepared to make a lifetime commitment to love and care for each other in good times and in bad, the government shouldn’t deny them the opportunity to get married,” Portman wrote in a commentary published Friday in the Columbus Dispatch.

I guess we should all be grateful Rob Portman’s son didn’t choose to become a polygamist or a serial killer.

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People like Todd Akin and Steve King don’t represent a threat to the future of the Republican Party. People like Rob Portman and Karl Rove represent a clear and present danger to its future.

What they are pushing is not liberty, it is licentiousness. What they are pushing is not morality, it is moral relativism. What they are pushing is not the kind of virtue and personal responsibility that makes self-government possible, it is the kind of pop-culture immorality that makes self-government impossible.

Ohio-based activist Linda Harvey, president of Mission America, lamented Portman’s decision to support his “rebellious” son’s “disorder” and “delusion”:

It’s not that I can’t empathize with the position his son has put him in. Every parent hopes never to face a rebellious child. But Portman has decided not to call this rebellion. Whether it was pressure from his wife or some kind of ultimatum by his son, Portman now issues editorial statements that ring with “gay marriage” advocacy. What a slam on Ohio families!

He opines about “civil marriage rights” as if they don’t exist now. These unions will be a stabilizing force bringing “renewed strength” to the institution, he thinks – but Portman is either woefully uninformed or deliberately ignores the mounting evidence against these lifestyles and the political militancy they are unleashing . There is no excuse for a sitting senator to jump on board a movement that viciously targets challengers, forces indoctrination of children in taxpayer- funded schools and bullies the corporate culture as well as the Boy Scouts into bowing before its altar of deviance.

And it’s so unnecessary. Every person out there who claims a “gay” identity has the ability to get married in Ohio or anywhere else now. He or she can marry someone of the opposite sex, because that’s what marriage is and because a “gay” identity is a delusion. Two men, no matter how sincere they feel, or two women, will never be a marriage. The person who believes this disorder is “who he is,” as apparently Portman’s son does, has tragically internalized a lie.

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The deception of the culture is easy to accommodate if your principles are weak at the core. Homosexual feelings may seem unchosen, but we do have a choice about what fantasies and desires we nurture and feed. And we always have a choice about public identity and behavior.

His son needs to hear the hope of change and the stories of the thousands of former homosexuals in this country. But his father is apparently not going to tell him. How sad!